Ideographic Modernism

"Taking his cue from Gertrude Stein's quip ('In China there is no need of China because in China china is china'), this remarkable book makes us understand why modernism (and also theory) always need China as 'China'--not the projection of an Orientalist discourse, but a trope of otherness as writing. Bush probes with unrivaled depth and subtlety the paradoxes created by a Chinese 'arche-writing' seen as an active exoticism at the core of two centuries of creative mistranslations." --Jean-Michel Rabaté, author of Writing the Image After Roland Barthes "Ideographic Modernism is a brilliantly learned and perceptive book, one that makes an original and significant contribution to the still evolving series of studies that have dealt with literary modernism and Orientalism in the wake of post-structuralism." --Robert Kern, author of Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem "Provide[s] insightful, conceptually sophisticated analyses and reflections...Its thoroughly argued, self-reflexive, and multi-layered account of how modernist writers wrote and thought about, by way of, and with China constitutes at the same time a compelling invitation to rethink what reference as such, what writing about something means." --Modern Chinese Literature and Culture "Bracing and insightful...a remarkable accomplishment." --Comparative Literature Studies